(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

While I'd quite like to believe this (who doesn't love a story about kids fighting for the right to read what they want?) I find it hard to believe that a Roman Catholic school* would ban some of these. I mean, admittedly you might censor Paradise Lost, because its Christology is certainly very dubious, but getting upset about works on human evolution is more of a fundamentalist Protestant thing, and I can't imagine why any school that didn't have a Stalinist axe to grind would want to ban Animal Farm.

But.... Dante? I'm not buying it without considerably more substantiation.



* The OP doesn't specify what kind of 'strict private school' they attend, but states that "most of the books contained information that opposed Catholicism".

Comments

Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[tree_and_leaf]

I suppose I could see H2G2 remaining on a banned list, had it once been put on, but I agree that I can't think of anything specifically anti-Catholic in it, or even that much that singles religion out as particularly objectionable (and there's a favourable reference to Jesus in the first chapter). There's the stuff about how Earth is created, of course, but I can think of a lot of things which (if I believed in banning books) I'd consider more objectionable. And if you were going to ban a Discworld novel, it would be Small Gods, which is an attack on a highly centralised and bureaucratised religion gone bad, with obvious references to the Inquisition. (Actually I think anyone who wants to be ordained should have to read Small Gods, as Vorbis makes a very good Awful Warning about how not to be a priest). I can't think of anything in Mort that anyone could object to (well, apart from the proliferation of gods, but then you'd have to ban the whole lot).

I've met kids who read Adams, but it's not a Thing that would strike terror into the heart of authority.

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[twistedchick]

For some, all that would be needed to ban H2G2 is the knowledge that it was written by an atheist.

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[legionseagle]

You know, I actually had to Google him to establish that he actually was an atheist (not that it surprised me particularly) and I'd heard him speak?

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'd have guessed he was, certainly, but it's not like he was Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.